Book Talk

WHISPERS IN THE CLASSROOM, VOICES ON THE FIELD: STORIES OF SCHOOL, FRIENDS AND LIFE Richa Jha
Wisdom Tree, Delhi, Year 2017, pp.360, Rs.345

VOLUME XLI NUMBER 5 May 2017

Here’s a real bonanza of stories! That’s what strikes one at first
glance. Thirty-one short stories by well-known children’s authors … stories
about school life-urban and rural, stories about dating and falling in love,
futuristic stories that take one back to the crude past—that is, the present,
strange stories about ghosts in boarding schools and school reunions, stories
about stories that help make friends … it’s a lavish spread!
Our earlier vacuum in literature for the sensitive
adolescent years that oscillate between childhood and adulthood—and are often
beset with physical, mental and social worries, is now being fast filled up
with specific teenage stories like these. Needless to say, books dealing with
this stage of life can be both guide and friend.
Bindi wants to go to school, but ‘what would people say?’
Subhadra Sen Gupta’s eye opening story, ‘A Disobedient Girl’ is set in
nineteenth century Bengal when girls began schooling despite great family
opposition. Look at these vintage gems: ‘She’ll be ten soon, she is getting too
old for marriage.’ Or ‘Educated girls gain bad karma when they leave their
homes to go to school. And then that mysterious karma makes them widows because
it takes the lives of their husbands.’ But times do change and Bindi gets her
way!
Fats, a ‘less-than-lovely’ orphan, is the butt of cruel
jokes in school—till she finds her real talent and a family. Paro Anand’s
gripping story is woven around the real-life story of a javelin Olympic
champion.
Life is stifling in Musaddik’s madrasa, in Adithi Rao’s
‘Alif’, alleviated only by a game of cricket played with rudimentary bats …
till a rude shock softens Bade Ustadji and makes him more humane.
Sarla, the village girl is homesick in her new school where
she is treated with disdain: ‘Hey, do you have lice in your hair? She does
smell like a villager…’ But when she rescues a little boy from a mountain cliff
and wins the volleyball match for her school too, she wins the day. Bulbul
Sharma’s story, ‘No Mountain Too High’ shows that there is no real rural-urban
divide.
Here is a beautiful story.‘To Touch the Stars’ by Rohini
Chowdhury tells us of the rebel child bride who goes back to school and
learning.
Heart-warming and humorous, ‘A Blurry Truth’ by Anjali
Raghbeer is all about learning disability. ...